Jay "saurik" Freeman has been hard at work on what he calls a "full package index:" a centralized database of Cydia packages. One of the first features based on this fundamental restructuring is now live on Cydia's homepage: the new "Manage Account" option. Finally, there's a simple way to determine what you've purchased on the Cydia Store, giving you a quick and easy way to re-install your apps, tweaks, and themes after a restore.

There are some caveats to be aware of. First off, if you had originally purchased your package through RockYourPhone, it may or may not show up in your "Installable Purchases" list unless you've explicitly linked the two accounts. As saurik says, he "tried very hard to automatically connect together accounts 'as if by magic' sometimes you will need to manually associate your Rock account." There's buttons on all apps that were on Rock enabling this, but if you haven't taken the opportunity to do so yet, you can use the Transfer Rock Licenses page on Cydia to link your accounts.

Also, if you're one of the many humans in the 21st century who has both a Facebook and a Google account, be aware that you may have used one or the other - or both - to log into Cydia in the past. Remember that Cydia only uses Amazon and PayPal accounts for payment authorization, not login. And furthermore, any item that uses its own payment system outside of Cydia won't show up on the list, even though it may be marked "Package Already Purchased" on its product page.

This is all part of a revamping of Cydia that will be ongoing. With the proliferation of packages, the default repositories have inevitably gotten a lot of corrupt or damaged package files. One positive side effect of the new index is that those files have gotten weeded out. Jay's continuing his efforts to make a Cydia that works for everybody, and if you appreciate what he's done, you might consider making a donation on PayPal.

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I almost forgot a lot of the Cydia apps I paid for. Saurik is one step closer to making it virtually flawless. We just got to hope Repos stay properly constructed. That's what destroys Cydia's performance in my opinion.

This is a very nice feature! Only thing I'd like to see added: ability to sort installed packages (on the Manage tab) by date installed. That would make it much easier to debug issues when they pop-up. Now, I take a screenshot of the Cydia page right before processing the install since my memory isn't so good